Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme

Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Gloria De Piero]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to make that point. What the headline figures that I have quoted do not tell us are the personal stories of hardship that our ex-miners and their widows are facing. The average weekly pension is not much more than £80 a week. It is hardly a sum that someone could live a luxury lifestyle on. MPS pensioners rightly feel aggrieved at seeing the profits from their pension investments being used to boost the Treasury’s coffers. An MPS pensioner from my constituency called into my office recently to show me his recent pension statement. He had received the news that, thanks to a 3.4% increase to his guaranteed pension and a 4.2% bonus, his pension was going up to the grand total of £74.71.

[Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend remind the Government that we are talking about deferred income earnt by miners, not a gift that we are blessing them with? It is the miners’ money, not anyone else’s.

[Gloria De Piero]

That is why it is clear that the 50:50 surplus sharing arrangement put in place when the Government became guarantor needs to be renegotiated.